We bought a house!

a neglected house comes under lesbian rule

Liz and I bought a house. Finally!! We didn’t think it was going to happen for us and our student debt-having asses, but we had a little cash, a $10,000 first-time homebuyers grant, and the world’s greatest realtor. It helped that we were open to living in a town and can both work from home, so we were able to search across a large swath of Vermont (the state with the lowest and most unaffordable housing stock in the U.S.) It did NOT help that I’m self-employed and our mortgage lender was very obtuse, very “What’s her job? Her job is so confusing!” about it. We were also set on getting an inspection—not very “cool girl” of us, but it paid for itself 2x when it turned up a major plumbing problem that the seller agreed to fix before closing. Liz and I have both experienced a lot of financial shakiness in our lives and moved almost every year since 2020, so being able to stay in Vermont and feel like we actually live somewhere feels like stepping onto solid ground.

Our new house is a very plain, 3-bedroom ranch that was built in the 1950s. The basement is technically “finished,” but it is DAMP, SPIDERY, and divided into a maze of small rooms painted such colors as SKY BLUE and BLOOD RED. Someday we will transform this space into a laundry room, guest zone, and WNBA viewing room for Liz, but for now we have more urgent fish to fry. I made a TikTok of our first work weekend, which you can watch here. This is my first narrative TikTok, so be warned that it is ROUGH. I felt so awkward recording a voiceover!! I see so many areas for improvement and dog subplot possibilities for my next video.

small progress

After eleven days as homeowners, here’s what we’ve accomplished:

• We cleaned. The filth in our new house was mostly limited to dust and crumbs, so this wasn’t too crazy. I did, however, accidentally touch a dirty Q-tip with my bare hand and almost lose my shit whilst dusting five separate ceiling fans. My most satisfying cleaning task was taking all the shelves and drawers out of the refrigerator, scrubbing them down with bleach water, and putting them out to dry in the sun. Also, the washing machine is a front-loader and has this rubber lining that was slimy with mildew and old hair. The door and detergent drawer were also covered in mold. Reddit said that this is really common with LG front-loaders and recommended leaving the door open, wiping the lining out with a cloth after using, and not owning an LG washing machine in the first place. The lint trap in the dryer was mysteriously caked in grime, which I could only scrub out with a (brand new!) toilet brush. If you read this newsletter, you know I’ve been hauling our dirty clothes to various small-town laundromats for the past year, so I’m just relieved to have laundry at home.

• We got the roof repaired and back in the game for another year or two! This was a huge relief, since a new one costs one trillion dollars.

• Liz’s first order of business was ripping down the bathroom wallpaper, which was patriotic-themed and featured the words “Stars and Stripes Forever!” surrounded by little stars. The bathroom also had two dusty, enormous cabinets hanging within an inch of their life and a strange attempt at wainscoting. Our plan was to just buy a new medicine cabinet, paint, and call it a day, but the shower area is fucked up and necessitates a much larger renovation. Luckily we had money set aside for new furniture that we can reallocate.

  

  progress shot! the plastic tub had a leak and water was pooling underneath it, but it turned out there is an OG cast iron tub underneath

• We painted the dining room and kitchen a warm white (Classic Light Buff by Sherwin Williams if you’re nasty). It’s wild what a difference this made. This house suffers from too many accent walls—we counted 14 paint colors and 3 different wallpapers. And whoever did all this painting did not believe in taping or dropcloths, so there are smudges and drops of paint on all of the faucets, doorknobs, and floors. I’m pretty sure two of the bedrooms were painted by a literal child. We also removed at least 100 command hooks throughout the house, as well as dozens of those battery-operated push lights that stick to the wall.

• The backyard was dominated by an aboveground pool and while we did try to visualize ourselves as aboveground pool owners, the pool was unsightly and unswimmably small and I would rather have the garden space (I would not, however, say no to a cedar hot tub. Become a paid subscriber to TV Dinner today lol). We posted this on the internet and several people told us they were coming to get it, and then never showed up. Last night, an industrious angel showed up with a dump truck and the power tools to haul it away. The dogs have been loving the big dirt patch it left behind. They can’t stop smelling it.

There’s so much left to do. I want to replace all the boob lights and ceiling fans. I’m feral to refinish the floors and the deck and desperate to rip down the wall between the kitchen and living room. Fortunately, I can’t go too crazy because we’re almost out of money. Our goal this week is to finish painting, figure out if we can get a grant to install heat pumps, and draw up a budget for our bathroom remodel. We also need a new house number and most of the kitchen cabinets are missing knobs. I briefly convinced myself I could tile the shower myself but something I’ve learned is that when it gets to the point in the home improvement project when I’m looking at speciality saws on HomeDepot.com, that’s a sign that I need to throw in the towel and pay a professional who already owns that saw. Know thyself!!

the pitbull longs for furniture

Things that I enjoyed this week:

• Sorry to link to The Ezra Klein Show, but I loved this interview with Jia Tolentino about the decision to have children and how adults project their own tortured relationship with “screens“ onto their kids.

• This stroll through vintage L.L. Bean catalogs from

  Ok, Perfect
  , an amazing new newsletter about graphic design.

• For you nonfiction freaks out there, I’ve been unwinding at night with a copy of The Wide Wide Sea—a hefty tome about Captain Cook’s third voyage around the world in 1776, which ended in him getting stabbed to death (deservedly!) by Hawaiians. Wide Sea is about Captain Cook, but frequently incorporates indigenous perspectives and doesn’t glorify colonialism and “discovery.” I appreciated that this book sent me down important Wikipedia holes like Omai and Mammals of New Zealand.